The Moralisation of Citizenship in Dutch Integration Discourse

Willem Schinkel

doi:10.37974/alf.41

Abstract

In this essay two arguments are made about the Dutch integration policy discourse drawing on a distinction between formal citizenship and moral citizenship. First it is argued that citizenship is increasingly framed as moral citizenship and subsequently that this entails a shift from actual citizenship to a virtual conception of it. This virtualisation of citizenship leads to the discursive articulation of certain citizens - immigrants who are citizens in the formal sense - as quasi-subjects, at once protected and feared within the nation-state. This entails that the virtualisation of citizenship does not concern formal inclusion in the nation-state, but rather the moral inclusion in the discursive domain of 'society'.

Highlights

‘Citizenship’ has been of renewed interest for social scientists and political philosophers for a few decennia now.[1]
In post-war Europe, political membership meant, in practice, membership of society only for those who were connected by birth to nation and state and thereby to society.[11]
In what he calls ‘ideal theory’, such a model is present for instance in the work of John Rawls: “a democratic society, like any political society, is to be viewed as a complete and closed social system (...) we are not seen as joining society at the age of reason, as we might join an association, but as being born into a society where we will lead a complete life”

Summary

Introduction

‘Citizenship’ has been of renewed interest for social scientists and political philosophers for a few decennia now.[1]. In what can be called a relative shift in discursive importance from formal to moral citizenship, a reorientation of the state vis-à-vis society takes place which has, from a sociological point of view, consequences for the contemporary role of the state.

Results

Conclusion